Temple Emanuel in Pubelo, Colorado. Image by flickr

By Ari Feldman November 4, 2019

The FBI arrested a white supremacist Friday when he met with undercover agents to plan a bombing of the Temple Emanuel synagogue in Pueblo, Colorado.

The man, Richard Holzer, 27, was charged with one count of attempting to obstruct religious exercise by force using explosives and fire, Denver 7 ABC reported.

According to a criminal complaint, Holzer shared many anti-Semitic comments on Facebook, including statements that denied the Holocaust.

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“I wish the Holocaust really did happen,” he wrote in early September. “They need to die.”

“I really hate them with a passion,” he wrote a few days earlier. “I told this nasty Jew to fuck off or I’ll kill them.”

The arrest came after a month-long undercover sting. Multiple FBI agents played the roles of white supremacists, meeting with Holzer to plan a bombing and sending him pictures of supposed pipe bombs they were building. On Friday evening last week, they met up to go over the operation, scheduled to take place early Saturday morning. Holzer wore a Nazi arm band and brought a copy of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” to the meeting, in a motel room.

The agents arrested Holzer and brought him to a local police station, where he admitted to the bombing and called Jews a “cancer.”

“Although Holzer stated that he had not planned to hurt anyone, when asked what he would have done if there had been someone inside the synagogue when he arrived that night, he admitted that he would have gone through with the attack because anyone inside would be Jewish,” the complaint states.

Holzer also used racial slurs to refer to Latino people, and spoke of wanting to die in a shoot out with police officers.

Holzer’s target, Temple Emanuel, is the second oldest synagogue in Colorado, built in 1900. The community now has about 30 families, and is led by a rabbi who comes from Denver twice a month for services, according to its website.

Ari Feldman is a staff writer at the Forward. Contact him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @aefeldman

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